I’m taking a guess that I have been forgotten…by most of those who meant so much to me.

Such a maudlin (Magdalen) sentiment, but fitting after such a lackluster evening.

If you have read this far, then you are likely qualified to view the ikonoclastic (!) film Innocence Unprotected.

It’s a film about a film. Wikipedia really likes Croatian. I suppose because of the Roman letters.

So the original film is question was ostensibly called Nevinost bez zaštite.

It was made during the war. 1941.

Under Nazi occupation (just like Les Visiteurs du soir).

But our 1968 film (the film about a film…sort of) is by my favorite Serbian director: Душан Макавејев. Which is to say (with pity) Dušan Makavejev.

And about that title…well, it sounds the same. That enigma “Serbo-Croatian”…but I can only guess (“taking a wild guess here”) that it was Невиност без заштите.

It flashes before my eyes so quickly.

The H that sounds like N.

The B that sounds like V.

The upside-down N that sounds like I.

The C that sounds like S.

The b with its tail in the crosswind…blowing west to east…which, mercifully, sounds like a B (or b).

The 3 that sounds like a Z.

The Roman numeral III with a floor beneath it…like a Greek temple without a roof…sounds like “Shhh…(peaceful)”.

Those are the tough ones at issue.

Cyrillic letters.

Yes?

Now that I have bent linguistic steel like Dragoljub Aleksić, we shall move on to more pressing matters.

Bending spoons. Like Uri Geller.

An Israeli. You know how much I love Israelis 🙂

It is true, in a sense.

Once upon a time…that the French and the Jews were my favorite people.

Completely true.

What happened? How did I get bent from my Henry Miller humanism?

How did I move to a Jean-Luc Godard humanism?

Shouldn’t humanism value all humans equally?

Yes.

In my wrath…in my protective love for the Palestinians I have said some very unkind things about the Israelis. Nothing I’m sure they haven’t heard before.

I am not really at the vanguard of anti-Semitism.

But I said it to be hurtful.

Strong words.

Because I was mad.

I’m sure Norman Finkelstein is a fine person.

Anyone who would argue with Alan Dershowitz must basically be alright.

As for Dersh, any lawyer who would deign write a book called The Case for Israel (in 2003, no less…year of the Iraq invasion) must have a loose screw.

As for me, all my screws are loose.

I don’t give (nor do I receive) a fuck. Err…

That is Innocence Unprotected…a rather Dodoist film which wonders whether the dots of my most recent ellipsis were italicized. The dots.

It would be like writing a poem about Allen Ginsberg’s poem “Howl” (in full-on ekphrasis mode) and calling it “Howl”.

To say there is a considerable amount of film quotation in Невиност без заштите would be an understatement.

It is truly (Poetically) a film within a film.

I dreamt.

And as I did,

I hawked plywood espadrilles

in Belgrade.

Proudly,

to fund my feature film.

Writing is an attempt to live again.

Which is to say, if I begin to live again, then

I shall have to stop writing.

Not like this.

In misery.

Like Baudelaire.

Who only ever laid a hooker.

Because Jeffrey Immelt has neither the time nor mental capacity to read Walter Benjamin.

And that’s why General Electric will fail.

Because the futures of most things are the opposites of their current states.

The future of marketing? Anti-marketing.

Because people are tired of being tricked.

They want a refreshingly frank admission of inferiority.

And the endearment begins.

Capitalism hasn’t yet cashed in on socialism.

Because to do so would mean its death.

Both.

Trump and Sanders frozen for all time.

Which would mean the humorous death of politics.

And MegYn Kelly would pull her hair out as she stumbled down the steps of the U.S. Capitol.

A lifetime wasted.

But not over yet.

There’s still night school.

She could learn a useful trade.

Now that journalism is dead.

But maybe in some Ethiopian rainforest the last shrub of curiosity/courage/integrity sits waiting for some Amazon former Fox News reporter to scale its unwieldy 39 feet…to take a clipping from the top.

Journalisa arabica.

Caught in the middle like 5 Broken Cameras.

Nothing could curse a presidential candidate more now than positive coverage by Fox News.

Fox News: a more toxic endorsement than David Duke.

So now they change their tune.

Which begs the question: does that mean you think that Republicans were rational (God forbid) to oppose Trump so long?

Or was it merely their house organ which disapproved of the ginger waker?

“Wake up kids! I didn’t go to the University of Pennsylvania for nothing!!”

I would…as a paean to Mr. Georgia Guidestones himself, like to “expand upon” Gone With the Wind. You know…add some rap music to certain scenes, show Clark Gable brushing his teeth, and such. And then call it (wait for it…): Gone With the Wind.

“But certainly for THE PRESENT AGE, which PREFERS THE SIGN to the thing signified, the COPY to the original, representation to reality, the appearance to the essence…ILLUSION ONLY IS SACRED, TRUTH PROFANE. Nay, sacredness is be enhanced in proportion as truth decreases and illusion increases, so that [*] the highest degree of illusion comes to be the highest degree of sacredness. [*]”

Those are my notes.

My copy.

My marginalia.

I could autograph it for you.

But the words are by Ludwig Feuerbach.

Having gone through translation from German to English by Donald Nicholson-Smith.

So what?

I haven’t even named the film yet.

Or the director.

Rather, I haven’t named the film in English.

Substance has been subjected to style.

Style has no translation.

Close-Up.

By Abbas Kiarostami.

One of the few geniuses in the world.

You will find on my site the review for طعم گيلاس

Who’s reading?

Taste of Cherry.

I thought that surely no film by this auteur could top that, but I was wrong.

The depth of Close-Up completely defies what I thought was possible with cinema.

It is a shock.

I am at a loss for words regarding how much this film affected me.

It is as beautiful as a bus stop.

As poor as a paper bag.

The roses from the leaf pile are a good start.

All over the world.

We play “kick the can”.

Don’t ever let people lie to you about Iran.

What is the truth?

The truth is that there is a genius there who speaks directly to my heart…like no other.

That genius is Abbas Kiarostami.

But we must mention Mohsen Makhmalbaf.

He is perfect.

It is unbelievable.

Do you know how I would feel to meet Jean-Luc Godard?

Hossain Sabzian knows.

To meet the person who gave us hope…who depicted our suffering.

Bicycleran.

بايسيكلران

Or the blessed marriage promised long ago.

We, are on the outside looking in.

Farsi mocks us.

With its beauty.

There is a lump in my throat like a piece of coal.

Do we really care about Oriana Fallaci?

Or rather Peter Bogdanovich?

Interesting that you should ask.

At first we see Haj Ali Reza Ahmadi annoyed, but later we see him as remarkably humane.

When last I left Raymond Bernard’s three-part masterpiece, I was comparing Donald Trump to Jean Valjean.

But one thing is for sure: the world from which the Donald comes is that of the Thénardiers.

Trickery.

Fakery.

Deception.

Violence.

Anything for a buck.

To extend my past diatribe, every time Ted Cruz opens his mouth he merely helps the prospects of Mr. Trump.

I am convinced that Mr. Cruz made it through Harvard Law School by requesting his course materials be in coloring book format.

An intellectual debate between Cruz and George W. Bush would be a toss-up.

Cruz and W. are two of the most dense personages ever to have matriculated from Ivy League institutions.

But that is only part of the story.

Ted Cruz is a walking lie.

Ted Cruz is Edward Bernays’ 1928 book Propaganda with feet.

All of this is to say that there is something very wrong with the enemies which Donald Trump has made in his “wrecking-ball candidacy” (to borrow a phrase from the esteemed Dr. Webster Tarpley).

Fox News has created Donald Trump (the candidate) by badmouthing him for so long.

As Fox News has zero (ze-ro) credibility, this criticism has given credibility to Trump.

All of the major media outlets are bad, but none are as Twilight Zone, Orwell vicious as Fox News.

But we still have to examine these pesky Thénardiers.

For dramatic purposes (in the novel of Victor Hugo), they are “the arch conspirator[s]” (to borrow another phrase from another esteemed fellow, Mr. Len Bracken).

The Donald tells us [and I paraphrase], “Vote for me and you’ll find out who really knocked down the towers [WTC].” He tells us we might find it’s the Saudis…

That’s a brilliant maneuver.

Trump sunk Jeb Bush’s candidacy with fear.

Jeb’s got stuff to hide.

The family business might finally fall afoul of the law (officially) for the first time since Prescott.

Whatever the case may be, Bush got out.

Sure, his numbers were horrible, but I think Dr. Steve Pieczenik nailed it in a particular interview on the Alex Jones radio show. You can find a video of that [for the time being] under my “links” tab.

So getting back to these pesky Thénardiers, they would seem to be the vicious thugs who pulled off 9/11 (if we are to superimpose a humanist novel onto modern geopolitics).

A massive ad campaign (grassroots, of course) sounded the bell for the longest time that “9/11 was an inside job”.

While that may be true in many respects, it has all the hallmarks of a marketing tagline. Which is to say, what appeared to be an organic movement (9/11 Truth) may have been steered by the real culprits away from the bona fide jugular.

It certainly seems that the Thénardiers in question had many high-level moles (to borrow a line of reasoning from Tarpley) of the George W. Bush administration in thrall to their machinations.

But then another ad hoc deflection recently resurfaced. The “28 pages” chorus.

Alex Jones, who used to so vehemently pronounce that 9/11 was an inside job, recently became more concerned with the “28 pages”.

The “28 pages” seems to essentially be an attempt to blame Saudi Arabia for 9/11.

Therefore, Trump’s bombshell statement can either be taken at face value (to paraphrase, “You might come to find out that it was the Saudis…”) or as coded language.

If it is coded language, then it is brilliant.

But the question is this:

is Donald Trump a). Jean Valjean or b.) Thénardier?

Donald has done hard time in the free-range world of corporate stratagems.

The real question remains: does he have a heart?

Jean Valjean had a heart.

Thénardier had none.

As Cosette asks about the convicts, “Are they still human?”

Valjean answers “Sometimes.”

Did Donald make it through the gauntlet to finally bring the RIGHT perps to justice for 9/11?

Yes, the plaintiffs are right in their invocation of the Take Care clause of the U.S. constitution.

But we must make sure to not misquote former Supreme Court Justice Tom Clark by omitting the final words of his famous quote:

“Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws…” Which is to say, yes: Judge Hanen…you are right. Greg Abbott…you are right. Republican states…you are right. [I am speaking, of course, about the forthcoming Supreme Court decision on immigration…United States v. Texas.]

BUT…there’s more to Tom Clark’s quote…and it is often left out. As Paul Harvey would have said, THAT’S the rest of the story.

Nothing can destroy a government more quickly than its failure to observe its own laws, OR WORSE, ITS DISREGARD OF THE CHARACTER OF ITS OWN EXISTENCE.

Which is to say: the Democrats have the high moral ground here.

Let me clarify.

I hate Obama. He’s a fake and a phony.

He had the opportunity to bring to real perpetrators of 9/11 to justice.

He didn’t.

That should have been job #1 after having wrested the White House from the maniacal neocon Bush junta.

Unfortunately, at the very deepest levels it seems that cabal never left.

Obama merely carried on the War on Terror charade (even going so far as to kill a dead man…the bogus bogeyman…Osama bin Laden).

But Obama and Jeh Johnson are right about DAPA. MORALLY right. Which doesn’t make their actions legal. But I applaud the current administration for OSTENSIBLY caring about the people affected…the human beings…our illegal alien brothers and sisters. They are, first of all, humans. If they entered this country illegally, that is a secondary consideration. They must always remain, first and foremost, HUMANS.

Yeah, Obama and friends most likely pulled off the Sandy Hook false flag. That’s because the administration is, in general, a bunch of scumbags.

Speaking of presidents, Donald Trump is the only real candidate left.

Sure, he needs to slap himself in the face a few times and realize that Mexicans (among other immigrants from the south) and Muslims are people. That’s a big hurdle for the Donald.

That’s the stumbling block.

Trump is winning because he’s the only one willing to admit that he’s a jerk.

His actions say it.

Hillary? Secret jerk.

Cruz? Thinly-veiled jerk.

Sanders? Well-meaning jerk.

And then there’s the other jerk. We’ll call him nice jerk.

Trump has won the rhetoric battle.

Now he needs to dial it back a little bit and find a soul.

I know he has one…deep down in there…somewhere.

Sanders is right about Snowden. Trump has fumbled that one a bit.

But Trump is still the only one to address 9/11 with any sort of credibility.

That is priceless.

Can Donald “Jean Valjean” Trump turn it around and really make a positive difference?

I think he can, but he has to learn the lesson of the candlesticks…the silver…and the 40 sous.

It will be a tightrope. The master bigot will have to convince a country of bigots that our humanity impels us to a higher moral standard.

On my site, I always list a film in its original language (to the best of my ability).

In my opinion, that is the best way of honoring the film.

So far, I have encountered the mild idiosyncrasies of Romanian, Serbo-Croat, Czech, and Polish in addition to the mind-blowing intricacy of Farsi and Japanese.

But with Deutschland im JahreNull we are seeing a German-language film by an Italian director…sort of.

Italy has a very peculiar tradition concerning voiceovers and direct (or, conversely, indirect) sound. It is an oddity which caught the attention of Godard in his role as film historian.

I cannot give you as erudite an explanation as my hero Jean-Luc, but suffice it to say that foreign (non-Italian) films in Italy have traditionally been overdubbed into Italian. So, in other words, no subtitles.

This is distinct from an American viewer watching a Fellini film. The “American” version (whether on DVD or as a film print in a theater) will be in Italian with subtitles in English. This goes for almost all foreign-language (non-English) films marketed in the United States.

But getting back to Deutschland im JahreNull… It is similar to the Danish director Carl Th. Dreyer directing the French film La Passion de Jeanne d’Arc…with one major difference. Dreyer’s film was a silent one (the only French being the intertitles). Rossellini’s Deutschland im JahreNull is very much in German. We are hearing German actors speak (exclusively) German dialogue.

What is most interesting is the linguistic lineage of this film. In English, this film is known as:

Germany, Year Zero

Which is quite similar to Rossellini’s preceding masterpiece (in linguistic parallel):

Rome, Open City

To be fair, let’s consider the Italian name (the real name) of Rome, Open City: Roma città aperta. Fine. That is the way I recognize the film. The true name is (in my mind) Roma città aperta.

But with Deutschland im JahreNullwe come to a very strange case. If we do not recognize the primacy of its English title (Germany, Year Zero), and I do not, then we are directed by that great arbiter of cultural legitimacy Wikipedia to consider our options exhausted by being cognizant of the Italian title (Germania anno zero).

What is the message of this omission by English Wikipedia? I believe the message is that Germany was (and continues to be) a null. A zero. A conquered culture.

We see a similar thing in the kowtowing stereotype of conquered Japan. And though Japan might be experiencing some moderate-to-light financial troubles in recent years, Germany is by all accounts the economic powerhouse of continental Europe. Why do I bring economics into the discussion? Because wealthy nations are able to assert themselves.

But let us step back a bit. Wikipedia does have some tasty morsels of information concerning this film. If the source can be trusted, this 1948 film was not shown in Germany (the country from whence the language of the film takes its name) until 1952. After its single screening in München (Munich), it was not heard from again within those borders until it ran on German television in 1978.

Wow…26 years. Either this film was grossly misunderstood, or it was understood all too well. From my reading, this is a very pro-German document.

Rossellini was not George Stevens making concentration camp propaganda. Roberto was making art. The sign of art is the admission of possibilities. Art seduces us because it is subtle. Art does not proclaim in blanket statements. Art does not underestimate the intelligence of the viewer.

Roberto Rossellini did something with his “war films trilogy” which seems to have been unprecedented. The desire of neorealism was to film fiction as if it were documentary. This fiction would be, likewise, based on reality.

But why is it, then, that we have very different views of Roberto Rossellini and Robert Flaherty?

I will tell you my guess. Flaherty’s sin was in the framing of his presentation. To wit, he presented his staged documentaries (take the oil industry propaganda piece Louisiana Story for instance) as if they were naturally-occurring, spontaneous documentaries. The sin, then, was his duplicitous relationship with his subjects. He actively made his human subjects into actors.

Rossellini takes a different tack. There is no pretense that Deutschland im JahreNull is an ACTUAL documentary. It merely has the feel of that medium. Likewise, Rossellini’s use of nonprofessional actors was likely more of a precursor to Robert Bresson than a twist on Flaherty’s bizarre formula (which predated Roberto in both Nanook of the North [1922] and Man of Aran [1934]). No, Rossellini had created something new.

It’s not so much the films of Flaherty to which I object as it is the idea of them. At least one of his concoctions (perhaps thanks to director F.W. Murnau) is very fine indeed: Tabu [1931]. Flaherty and Murnau co-wrote this ostensible documentary. Indeed, with Flaherty we come into contact with inchoate, obscure film genres such as docudrama, docufiction, fictional documentary (ethnofiction), etc. etc. etc.

Most importantly, none of what I have written here has even scratched the surface of Deutschland im JahreNull. What ever became of the heartrending main child actor Edmund Moeschke? I do not know.

One thing is certain to me: no film before Rossellini’s “war trilogy” (Roma città aperta, Paisà, andDeutschland im JahreNull) [1945/1946/1948] takes on such politically sensitive and important topics in such a raw way. The closest would be the socialism of Eisenstein or the humanism of Chaplin.

It is, therefore, no wonder at all that Rossellini spawned a million “new waves” the world over.